EP114: Jay Kranda and the Constant Evolution of an Online Church

Hey, we're going to get you to that podcast in one second, but before we get there, I, Jeff Reed, the Church Digital, Stadia Church Planning, I wanted to have a conversation with you, churches that are out there.

One of the greatest things I arguably think that I've done in my life, other than married and kids, okay, that aside, one of the greatest ministry things I've ever done is this idea of the fidgetal learning communities that we are offering through Stadia Church Planning.

We want to help you, we want to help your church learn to thrive, grow, and multiply fidgetally, physically, as well as digitally.

We've seen about 200 churches go through this already, and it's been a phenomenal result of it.

Culture is changing within these churches.

They're understanding what it is to thrive.

They're understanding how to grow people, how to grow their church, even in the midst of this COVID, not COVID, wherever we are in the season.

And they're even starting to understand what it means to multiply in fidgetal space.

There's no secret sauce to doing a digital strategy.

There's no secret sauce to doing a fidgetal strategy.

There's no secret sauce to making your church thrive, grow, and multiply.

It takes work.

I'm not going to lie.

But through the framework, through the questions, through the learning communities, we connect you with churches.

We give you some content.

We coach you along the way to help you make the decisions that you need to make so that your church's strategy can thrive, grow, and multiply your church along the way.

This is a great opportunity for your church.

We would love to have you be a part of it.

For more information, check out stadiachurchplanning.org slash fidgetal.

stadiachurchplanning.org slash fidgetal.

P-H-Y-G-I-T-A-L.

All right.

Hey, that's it.

We're going to get you back to that episode right now.

All right.

Well, it's without a question.

Church has evolved over the past year, right?

Like, that's – we don't need to discuss that.

From where we were pre-COVID, February 2020, to where we are today, we, the church, have a whole other set of problems.

We've got a whole other set of challenges and a whole other opportunity to overcome that.

And that's really what we talk about here in this episode here with the Church Digital Podcast, how the church has evolved, how the church has grown, and what are the opportunities that we should be looking forward to on the road ahead.

So for the conversation, we're bringing in a regular here with the Church Digital Podcast.

We're bringing in Jay Crandon.

Jay is the online pastor with Saddleback Church, just a good friend and support in this season.

Check him out at jaycrandon.com.

Link in the show notes.

But Jay's coming in, and we're talking a lot about this idea of how the church has evolved.

What does it look like in kids?

What does it look like in students?

How do we do adult ministry different today, maybe, than what we did before?

How do you lead in an environment like this?

How do you handle things like big data and just so many conversations that are open, so many ideas we're just beginning to scratch the surface on as we're looking at how the church is evolving.

Don't play the ecclesiology card.

It's solid.

How it's evolving, fidgetally, working physical and digital together.

So we're bringing in Jay Crandon, like I said, Saddleback, Ray DeArmas, digital pastor, Christ Fellowship Miami, and myself, Jeff, with the Church Digital and Stadia Church Planting, in a conversation that I'm calling the constant evolution of an online church.

Okay, everybody.

Here you go.

Well, hey, you know, every time we get together, we never actually talk about the thing we're going to talk about.

So, Lakers, Heat, didn't go real well for the Miami fans here in Orlando.

It was brutal.

So, in the bubble.

So, what are we thinking in this upcoming season?

Who's bragging?

Who's holding back?

Where are we?

Ironically, Ray is literally wearing a Miami Heat shirt right now.

In the most tumultuous of times as a Heat fan, too, because we're, like, on a terrible losing streak.

But I actually, and I'm making the bold prediction right now, I actually think that Jay Crandon's Lakers go back to back.

I don't think that the Nets pull it off.

I don't think that they make it happen.

I'm waiting for Kyrie to make that whole team implode with some kind of crazy theory about the world being flat or something.

But I'm waiting for that to implode.

Crandon, what say to you?

Yeah.

I mean, we're, we're, when you're, I honestly care less about this year.

I don't know.

We already won.

So, I'm kind of like, whatever.

But, yeah, I haven't watched a ton of basketball at the start of the season.

I've watched, I've watched only probably six or seven games, really, I feel like.

And I've, I've, just because it started so quickly, you know.

And so, I watched the game last night.

It was, it was not the greatest game for the Lakers, but they did come back.

But I, they're so good right now.

They're just playing good.

They seem to be cruising.

Even the games they lose, it's like, they're, they're in it.

So, when a team is playing like that, you kind of assume they're going to win it.

But who knows?

It all comes down to the trade deadline.

Who gets moved around?

Who are the buyouts?

And injury, you know, it's going to be a weird year.

Put people playing a lot of games, slow rest, and we're going to go in.

It's going to be a weird, it's going to be, it's going to be interesting.

So, the Lakers are the favorites.

There's no doubt.

Like, that's true.

It's just the reality.

Yeah, I think that's the LeBron effect.

Like, you know, during the regular season, it doesn't matter really what happens because

you know you're going to be there at the end.

You know you're going to be in it.

Like, that's how I felt the four years that he was here.

It was, we had a lot of the drama that first year, that up, down, it was the heat, the whole

thing with them going town to town.

But really, at the end, you knew that they were going to be there in contention as one

of the final four, and then most likely one of the top two.

Yeah, it's going to be good.

I feel like, Jeff just brought that up to try to get us to not like each other.

I feel like that's what I did.

Well, you know, I'm going to put the proverbial gun through your head right here, because,

Jay, I'm not feeling the excitement from you on the NBA with the Lakers.

Like, you've got the crown.

You're the champions, and you're not excited.

So, I want to ask you this, and I'm not a sports guy.

Lakers or the field?

I want you to claim right now.

I want you to throw down.

Are the Lakers going to walk away with this, or is it going to be the field?

Because you're not showing me the emotion that champion Laker fan needs to be showing.

What do you got?

You ask that question like you've gambled in the past.

Jeff is sponsored.

The Church Digital Podcast is officially sponsored by DraftKings.

We want to thank DraftKings very much.

Whoa.

That just accelerated quickly.

No, I would bet the Lakers right now.

I would bet the Lakers.

So, LeBron.

Just LeBron's been there, and you've got all these teams that are very good.

But if you look around, the Clippers are the only other ones that you kind of go,

who can pull it out is Kawhi.

Kawhi can deliver.

But everybody else, you've got a lot of, like, Sixers haven't been there.

Milwaukee struggles to get to the conference finals in there.

You've got Nets, who KD is KD, but you've got everybody else who's, like, kind of a mess.

And you just kind of go, Utah is Utah.

Like, they're great, but they're always over-projected that Utah is going to be better.

So, you just kind of look nuggets of struggle.

Like, it's just like, yeah, you would go, the Lakers are the easy, they've got to be the favorites

just because of LeBron.

So, yeah.

That's true.

But also, yeah, I was going to say, you have the benefit of having the trophy.

You know, like you mentioned that earlier.

Oh, yeah.

Because on the off chance, and it would have been a huge upset had you guys lost to Miami,

it would have been pure suffering this season, just waiting to get back to the top.

Because that's how it felt to us when we lost to the Mavs that first year.

It was suffering, just waiting to get back.

They, you know, Popovich just said that it's, you know, it's hard to get, go back to back

because there's like, the motivation is not really there.

It's, you know, because you've kind of already done it.

Now, when you, you know, I think LeBron is motivated to do it because he wants to kind

of edge MJ.

So, I think he's motivated.

But I think, I don't, I don't, I think most, that's why it's, it's, it's hard.

So, but yes, I like our, our start, our, our up there.

So, if, I'll call it all off.

If Russ ends up on the Miami Heat, you know, who knows?

If Russ ends up there, we'll be, Russ, Russ, I think I saw scored 35 points on 35 shots

the other night.

It was just horrendous.

Wow.

Well, Bradley, Matt is mad at Russ.

Yeah.

Bradley Bill would be the guy for the, for the heat.

He would.

Yeah.

He would.

It's just typical Heat fans.

We don't want to give up anything.

Like, we'll Photoshop a guy in our jerseys like all day.

And we'll be like, yeah, let's trade the guy at the end of the bench for him.

You're talking, the Laker fans are the Photoshop Kings.

So.

That's true.

Let's not be aware.

It's two franchises that are cursed with that.

So.

Okay.

And we're going to pivot.

That was nice for these six people who are still listening to the podcast, who are actually

interested in online ministry.

Awesome.

Hey, let's, let's pivot and let's dive into, uh, into a conversation here, uh, about digital,

about digital ministry, online ministry.

So, uh, obviously COVID has been crazy.

It's, it's been nuts.

Um, and we've seen a massive cultural shift, uh, within churches within the past year.

I don't even think we've had, we're not, what are we, 10 months now heading into, uh,

to March, 2021.

And, and it's important, I think, to realize that COVID was an accelerator.

Uh, we were already on this path.

We were already on this journey.

COVID just got us there quicker.

It's a virtual fast forward button on the VCR machine, getting us to the destination at

a much quicker rate.

And with that, we've seen pivots within the church.

Some churches are trying to go back to the way that it was February, 2020.

Like that was the greatest time in the history of the church.

Some, some people are trying to figure out how to address a new digital strategy, uh, a

fidgetal strategy, figuring out how to, to get physical and digital to work together.

Um, what I wanted to do with this podcast really, you know, Jay, you've been doing the online

ministry, digital ministry for a decade plus.

Um, you know, at some point it's embarrassing to ask how many years, but you've been, you've

been in the game a long time.

Ray's been in the game a long time as well.

And I would just wanted to even talk about how we've changed, uh, ministry, what the position

looked like, maybe pre COVID, what the evolution, what the changes, how we've adjusted ministry,

even an operating at a staff level, at a volunteer level, how ministry has looked different as

we've gone from pre COVID towards this acceleration process and culture and where we are now.

So even Jay, just to kick us off, by the way, welcome back once again, man, it's always great

to have you on, but, but just tell us a little bit, like what, what pivots, what changes, what

evolutions have you seen kind of in digital ministry within this COVID season?

Yeah, for sure.

It's been a, you know, I don't know what the phrase is official.

People are saying it's the adolescence or the adult phase of, of the internet.

But we just, I mean, even right now, as we're recording this, you know, there's all this

stuff going on, on the stock market with how Reddit and all these people are influencing

things.

I got right now up, uh, I got, I had a couple of months ago or a month ago, bought some dog

coin crypto and I'm watching it double.

And it's just like, cause of just internet and Twitter and people and engagement.

And it's just, you have this, like, you know, here's the deal when you get a bunch of people

and you connect them, all sorts of things can happen both good and bad.

And I think the church, um, for sure, it's, it's been a slow step into the direction of

figuring out how do you use all these tools to do the things we need to do.

Um, you know, early on, you know, my role, when I first stepped into online ministry,

I was kind of just, you know, I would say somebody who just made sure the weekend happened

and I pointed out issues.

It's like, did the stream work, have a chat person there.

It was very like, you know, AOL chat, you know, MSN hotmail messenger ish, you know, it's

just very, just, just make sure nothing breaks, you know?

And then over the course of a couple of years, we started to see viewership grow.

We started to see more people responding.

I remember the first response cards I handled were like, I got exported to a PDF that I had

to like type into a system to like follow up with.

Um, now that's like 2009 ish, you know?

So like some of the systems were pretty new, at least how they all integrated together.

But you think about now, like we moved from, you know, just having somebody paying attention

to it to, Hey, these online groups are a huge potential.

That was our first, I think, big learning was having me part-time over it.

And then I had other responsibilities at my church when I first started.

And then our online groups grew a ton.

And I think we launched those around 2012 ish.

And we, you know, we weren't using zoom.

I zoom didn't exist.

I think it was called something else or it had just been created.

And, uh, we used something called talk box at the time and integrated on our website.

And I think online groups were our first, like big jump of like, Oh wow.

Like community can happen.

Like people can connect.

Now it was like old school webcam, you know, I don't know, whatever it was.

I think we actually use Adobe flash, uh, Adobe.

Whoa, whoa, whoa, whoa, Adobe connect.

Okay.

Connect connects.

Okay.

Flash.

You're not allowed to say that anymore.

That's like a, it's like a curse word.

No, we're done.

And like it, what, what that means anymore, because like some it's like, doesn't work.

And then anyways, um, so it's dead.

It's officially RIP.

It's done.

Okay.

Um, I, I'm going to miss my flash games, addicted games.com flash based games.

Um, so I, I just, it, that was our first stage for our church.

And so I actually got hired initially full-time to be, to take care of our weekend and then

over our online groups and then move forward a couple more years.

And then it was like, Hey, we actually want to make a campus out of this.

And so it's like, we have the groups, we have the weekend, let's like get ministry.

Let's like start maybe allowing people to start groups in their homes far away.

Um, and then during COVID, you know, when we stepped into COVID, our church particular,

you know, we definitely had a huge leap ahead, but I think we kind of really realized

that, you know, coming out of COVID, this is going to look very differently.

And so we had conversations early on, we had some strategy around, you know, what is

like the butterfly moment for the online campus?

Um, because, you know, with everybody being online, we don't want to segment out.

You know, I, I've been kind of saying this thing where like the problem with having a

digital point person or online pastor or a digital pastor, whatever you want to call

them, is that like, what are they supposed to own?

Because every team is supposed to have a digital presence.

So what are you, are you owning a, just the digital community or even a consultant internally?

You know, that's the, you know, like if, if you're helping with, if you're the digital

pastor and helping with online groups, or shouldn't those small groups person at your

church be over the digital groups?

How, how is that connection?

And so obviously this gets easier, harder depending on your size.

But I think even more recently we've been having that kind of moment of like, maybe the online

ministry is no longer like a campus and maybe like my role is a little bit more, um, broader

where I'm helping the church on, on all sorts of things and speaking into things.

But I think I just, I put this on Twitter and I don't know if you guys saw it, but I think

Ray, you saw, but I put this on Twitter a couple of days ago where I've talked to some of the

largest churches over the last couple months and every single one of them have asked, what

are you guys doing next?

Because they, they are restructuring their online ministry.

And these are churches that have thriving online ministries and they've realized that

they can't just do the same thing.

They got to change.

And what's interesting is there's a bunch of churches that are looking towards us to go,

we just want to do what you're doing.

And what we're at is we're like, we don't want to keep doing this.

We want to do something completely different.

So that's kind of been our journey.

I, that's like a shotgun of everything, but, um, but yeah, that's what I'm curious, Ray,

what, what you guys are doing at your church.

You know, for us, Jay, it's been very much the same thing.

I mentioned this to Jeff earlier, where it's like, you know, Jeff started a lot of the stuff

at Christ Fellowship.

And then I grabbed the baton and I kept going with the groups and some of the different stuff.

And we were continuing to build community, build community, build community, COVID hits.

And my role shifts more into, we've got campus pastors and then we've got dotted lines and online

kind of functions a bit as both.

And then my role shifted way more towards the dotted line side, where I found myself resourcing

other ministries and working with them to first get their content up, but then to get them from

content to community as well.

And then since then, you know, by God's grace, uh, one of the things that we did last year,

because, you know, on, especially down here, Miami, you know, we're bilingual.

We got a whole lot of stuff.

We, we weren't doing Spanish online.

Then we decided, all right, now that we're, we're locked down, we got to go fully Spanish

online.

And so we, we brought back Spanish online for us and that had to go full.

Then we had kids online, then we had students online.

And so I finally got, you know, I was able to open up another job position to get somebody

to help me out with some of the stuff that we're doing on the regular.

And so Brandon came on, he's, he's my online coordinator.

Now he helps me out with like the majority of the stuff now with the community, because

I've got to focus on a lot more of a bigger picture in terms of, all right, what's kids

doing?

What's students doing?

Oh, kind of like what you're saying, Jay, Hey, ministry has got to change.

Oh man, students really aren't engaging with this, you know, the way that adults are

with their stuff.

So how can we help them brainstorm and work towards solutions for that?

And then in the midst of that too, there's also this, this whole digital revolution that

we were in the middle of even reopening where we wanted to go to more of a touchless experience.

And I was already overseeing a lot of the digital aspects of our stuff in terms of our app and

some of that stuff.

And so we had to come up with creation and, and, you know, possibilities for that.

And then how to get that to integrate with our database system.

So more and more of that has become half IT, half, you know, web-based stuff, and then

a lot of community underneath.

And so it's, it's been a little bit crazy fun as far as like how this rollercoaster ride

has gone, but it's definitely not the same job description in terms of engaging it from

the onset.

Definitely not that.

Does, does kids and students, and like, is that, is that an active, I know Ray, you guys

are, are, are still actively running with that.

Um, is that still active in general?

Are we hearing a lot of that?

It seems like we, we couldn't really figure out the answer and it felt like a lot of churches

started to kind of fall away from that kind of what, what's your vibe looking into the future

as we look at like children's ministry and student ministry.

Yeah.

You know, you know, at a church, our sides, you know, it's really, you know, I, I'm not,

I'm not super engaged with, um, I'm not part of that strategy directly.

I'm more like a, an advocate or just somebody who speaks into, you know, where I can add value.

I know like, are they're rethinking some of their strategy.

They're trying to engage more like they've leaned heavy into YouTube and then they're

trying to get a more live interactive event.

I actually think that they're going to maybe host some events on chop, um, in the next year.

So like, that's easy.

Like I've used chop, so I know how to like, you know, speaking to that.

So, you know, I, I think for us, the one thing that each team has realized, and I think

every church has realized is that, you know, you need to have some, this is what I'll say.

I'm trying to encourage a lot of people to think through creating digital spaces where

their community can connect with each other.

So instead of like a lot of churches, we're relying off of Sunday as the time you run into

your people and you connect and they connect with each other, but you need to have like

a Facebook group, a message or thread, you need to have something.

I don't care where it is, but you need to allow that.

And like, for example, like I know our, our Saddleback kids, you know, ministry, you know,

they had a hard time converting parents to start watching their content because they never

had the mechanism to rely, to, to tell them to go watch something because kids just showed

up every weekend.

And so that was like a communication strategy, but I know moving out of this, they, they want

that muscle to be big, but, um, to be strong.

And so for us, it's, I think that's the nugget of how does it all work together?

You know, under, you know, on our website, you know, we redesigned or, you know, we added

the first couple of weeks of COVID, you know, links to our Saddleback kids and our student

ministry links right on our online page where it used to be just our adult service where

there were easy links.

We're moving into more customizable stuff around campuses where you can get your own stuff.

But, um, you know, I, I, I think coming out of COVID, you know, in person is going to be

just as valuable.

The question is, is I just think there's going to be more eyes on the digital and they're going

to understand that that's such an important backup, you know, because yes, maybe you reach

this many kids on a Sunday when you open back up.

But the question is, is you still can reach more if you do digital, right?

Um, you know, I always come back to something that I think is important this year is just no

longer asking for scraps for online, like where you're just trying to justify it financially.

I think we need to take bigger swings.

We need to, you know, I, that's how I worked early on.

It was just like, Hey, I, if we did this, I know it will make sense.

And I think like, um, I like to think of the example of, you know, the church that I came

to faith that was this was a church about 500, you know, not super small, not super big,

but I remember like our youth ministry had a budget of like 2,500 for the year or something

like that was our budget.

And it was like a pain to try to get a budget increase, but we would spend like $10,000 once

our AC broke on our worship building.

And it's like, we're so quick to open up wallets for our building because we, cause it's easy

to understand.

It's like looking at, you know, I was, I was like, one of my good friends was arguing

me about cryptocurrency.

And he was like saying something about, it doesn't even make sense.

And it's a zeros and ones.

And I was like, well, your money in your bank is just zeros and ones.

It's the same thing.

It's not money.

It's not really sitting in the bank somewhere.

Um, but it's just hard for you to, it's hard for him to conceptualize why this is important

the same way.

I think it's hard for senior pastors and committees and leadership and deacon boards

and all this to think about why is your website important?

Why is your streaming in quality?

You know why?

I was just looking at another friend's church and, you know, they were streaming and the

service was a little blurry.

And I was just like, you know, I think your camera's too far away and you probably need

to up it, but it's going to cost some money.

Yeah.

Get all that equipment.

And I think it's just, we need to take bigger swings.

And I think that's just, that's overall stuff I'm feeling, but I'm curious how more ministries

adapt to the kids and stuff, because I think it is an area that is under, I will say most

people's strategies that I see are super disconnected.

Generally, I, um, Jim, just even last night, I was having a conversation with the lead pastor,

probably 800 to a thousand person church.

And, um, and he asked me, he's like, how much, how much money should I be spending on

digital?

And my response was, what's your percentage of people pre COVID that are back into your

building?

And, and, and he said 20%.

And I said, so you've got 80% of people that are not in your building that are still engaging

with you digitally.

He said, yes.

I said, how much money are you spending on digital right now?

And he's like, maybe, maybe 2%.

You might want to shift that a little bit.

Like, I don't know that I want to say 80% of, of your budget needs to go towards digital

since 80% of your people are digital, but at least something more than two, like don't

tip online.

If that's where the majority of your people are, um, engage with them.

Yes.

Pull them back to the building.

If that's part of, of what your strategy is, but you're going to lose those people.

If you continue to ignore them in digital space.

So Ray, what, what are you chewing here thinking about this?

No, it's funny.

Cause you know, Jay mentioned crypto earlier.

And I think a lot of pastors approach, uh, church online.

Like they approach like some, some new people approach cryptocurrency, right?

Jay, they're like, all right, cool.

I'm going to invest $2 and I'm going to get back a million dollars.

Like this is going to be like a lottery ticket, you know?

And they don't realize that there's, that this is investment in the sense of, yeah, you

know, you, you get a little bit more bang for your buck, but at the same time, that doesn't

mean that you go cheap.

And especially in the area of kids and students, you know, as churches start to reopen, as

they start to reconfigure their scorecards, Hey, how are we going to determine whether

or not we've got wins here as we reopen and try to get some of these people back into the

building, especially for Gen Z, you know, you're, you're talking about reaching this

next generation, Jeff, your kids, Jay, your kids, my kids, they're all watching YouTube

channels.

They're all watching these influencers.

They're, they're, they're pouring in hours and hours.

Yeah.

For you, it's roadblocks for my kids.

It's ninja kids.

Like they're obsessed with like, you know, these little American ninja warrior children,

you know, that, that flip all over the screen.

That's, but that's what they're into.

But, you know, for, for kids and students, we kind of have to be at the forefront of some

of that too.

And we have to figure out how to do that.

Our kids ministry, they did something fantastic that they're still doing where they got smart.

They started to think like a YouTuber and they started getting into these box challenges

where basically they would give kids challenges throughout the series.

They would encourage them to watch like, Hey, you know, make sure that get your parents

permission, you know, fill out the card.

Like, Hey, I, we're going to give you guys some things to do.

Like, Hey, I watched three out of the five services.

I memorized the verse for the series.

I did this email that to us.

And then we will send you a box full of CF kids goodies.

And then, you know, they, they come through on it.

And that, that right there has been a great way for us to get some data and write like, Hey,

are you watching?

We want to connect with you.

And then from there, we've also offered parents like free resources on the form as well.

Like, Hey, we'll email you all of our orange, you know, resources that we have for parents.

And that's been a great way to just kind of tie all that in together and a powerful way to help

kids create community.

And then the parents, like we encourage them to tag, like when their kids get the box tag

it on social media, you know, and we share that.

And so it's created this really cool ongoing community that's worked out really well for

us.

It's been good.

Yeah.

Maybe even that, that's a great idea, right?

Like I'd never, the fidgetal approach of that mailing something physical, getting kids

to engage with something in physical space, rewarding that, you know, I know at, um, I'm

just even thinking back to my days at Christ fellowship, they had the, well, I don't know what

it's called, but the bling store where you could go get like all the cheesy stickers with

the Christ fellowship branding or the CF kids Frisbee and all that.

But trying to engage that physical side by rewarding digital engagement, that's, that's

really a great idea.

And that's easy to do, right?

I don't know that I wanted to park out on this, but the ability for a small church to

create a small bling box, uh, to, to mail out or to, to reward some of that engagement

that that's a great idea.

Yeah.

And, and, and just to give you an idea for those new churches that are listening out

there, you're like, oh man, but what if it costs X, Y, and Z?

We, so one of the things that we did was we resourced our local, our local campus kids

directors to deliver the boxes for their kids, you know, in a safe, spacious and sanitized

way.

They would show up and my girls loved it.

Like their campus kids director showed up masked up, you know, with like little bells and whistles

and that kind of thing.

Like shaking it up, like, Hey, Zoe and Lexi, you guys did it.

That's awesome.

And they left the box there, you know, but for my kids, anything that they get in snail

mail is gold.

Anything that they get in the mail, it makes them feel so special.

And so that, that for them just creates an awesome experience for them.

There's something around, um, you know, one of the things I'm trying to do is because the

learning curve here is so quick, it's, you know, you know, I, I last a couple, the last

couple of weeks I've been told by like, you know, a bunch of different people that I need

to be on clubhouse.

And it's like, even to me as a digital pastor, I'm like, whatever, you know what I mean?

Like, and, and so like I get on it and I'm using it, but the question is, it's like everybody

else is just like sinking, you know, they're trying to keep ahead.

And I think there's all these ideas from kids ministries to how to make your service more

engaging, how to think about groups, to communication strategies, all this stuff.

And I think one of the things I we're trying to do, and, and, and I think some churches

I've seen do this is try to create more of a cohort of learning and honoring those that

are taking, you know, cool, doing cool things because no one, no one here is the expert on

this stuff.

I think there are people that can be voices of reason.

You know, I might not know how every platform works, but I at least can think through what's

the, you know, I can notice good expressions of things.

And I think we're trying to create like a, like honoring, especially because the church

our size, like, Hey, check out what this team did and like, let's learn from it.

Or here's the tip.

So almost like educating, you know, and I would say for most churches do that for your staff

and for your volunteers, you know, even when you're small, like, how do you get your core?

When I was a youth pastor before I was at my church, you know, I had 20 volunteers that

I met with monthly that helped pull off our youth ministry and we would meet and we would

talk about things and they weren't paid.

And I would do the same thing there, like teaching digital.

So like that, you know, at that point it would be like, Hey, your small group leaders or your

people in your group, what tools are you using?

You know, how do you use it?

You know, tell us about Slack or tell us about house party or whatever.

Um, and so I think we're trying to, and so by, by elevating people at our church that are

doing cool things digitally, it's, it's, it's kind of saying like, Hey, this is a cool stuff.

And then it's also encouraging and equalizing it to everybody else.

And so that, I mean, that's what happened to the world with zoom, right?

Nobody really understood zoom.

Now everybody understands it.

They understand so much about zoom that they're fatigued on zoom.

So I think, but that came with like being pushed into the deep end.

And so I think, I think one of the things that, you know, especially if you're listening to

this as an online pastor, you know, figure out how you can be a coach to your broader church,

or even if you're the digital person at your church, maybe you're not even that officially,

you know, like send a monthly email about, Hey, I noticed what the kids ministry did with

this, or, Hey, by the way, I was reading this article about this thing, you know, you know,

so I think having that collective, you know, almost like a Reddit thread type of sub community

where you're just kind of learning together.

And then what you do is you position yourself as a, as somebody who is, um, who, who is one

of the experts, you know, I did not sign up to be an expert in online church.

I just started to like, talk about it, share it.

And I think, especially if this is somebody, and I'm going to get super focused here, like

if this is somebody that you're like, you want to be that person for your church, well, just

start doing it, start doing it, start sending, you know how many times I've gotten goodwill

with my leaders by just sending random emails of my thoughts.

Like, it's just like, Hey, I was thinking, and like, I'll get this reply back, which I'm

like, they're not even going to reply.

And they'd be like, this was so good.

And it's just like a small thing like that.

And so it's always, it's always easier to go, well, it'd be nice if I had that title,

but I'm telling you like your leadership and your church and your people, they don't know

how to think about this.

And that's why you're going to have to build it, which is like the scary part of it.

And also the fun part.

I like the idea, Jay, of decentralizing to, you know, the pathway for information to flow

in.

Like you talked about, you know, sharing articles or sharing things and encouraging that kind

of thing within the organization, because so often, and we've talked about this on this

podcast where it's like, I don't have all the good ideas, but I can, I can also be a student

of other people in the organization in terms of what they're doing and sharing that amongst

each other.

That's important because my kids director might have a great idea for, for adults online

that I'm not even thinking about, but if, if I shut myself off to her, then, then I've

siloed everything that we could do in digital and we, we might not grow or we miss out on

an opportunity to grow together as an organization.

Yeah.

If you keep pulling that thread and following this decentralized line that we were talking

about, we're getting back to this place of empowering individuals and listening to

individuals in that.

And, and that really even going back to the whole Reddit GameStop thing that we're living

through in real time, for me, this is just another example of where individuals have more power

in now 2021 than our organizations do.

If the individuals figure out how to capitalize, how to take advantage of the system, how to

speak up for themselves and, and, and manage it, organizations need to be afraid of an individual

or of individuals that are on a mission.

If we, the church could figure out how to do that, if, if to leverage our individuals to

that way, it's phenomenal potential.

And as we're talking about like equipping and how are you guys seeing, you know, in your

ministry, maybe we weren't even talking about equipping, maybe Jay was, cause Jay was future

thinking pre COVID.

But now in this season, Kerry Newhoff saying, Hey, if you want to be effective in the future,

you need to be equipping people today.

How are you seeing that pivot?

Are you seeing that pivot happening in real time within your churches?

Yeah, I'm, I guess, you know, I, I, I see stuff happening and I think what's hard is we are

at a really weird moment where it, this is why it's always easier for a, you know, for it's

harder for a blockbuster to become Netflix and that, and then a Netflix to go back to blockbuster.

You know what I mean?

Like, because it's just when you're, you're trying to move a huge ship here.

And so I think, I still think there's this thinking around churches where, you know, it's,

it's about ministering to people in the room and it's about, you know, because here's the

deal.

There's a lot of churches that are in lease agreements, have debts and stuff, and they

have to make that thing work, you know, which is okay.

I think this is why other, I've had a lot of conversations with churches internationally

that don't have the luxury of, of being able to own property.

And it's a whole nother dynamic, you know?

It's the same reason why a lot of our stuff about not meeting here in the U S it's, we

can cry about our religious rights because we, we have a lot of them here.

And so, uh, and so I, I, I'm curious, I, I'm not a hundred percent sure how churches will

pivot, but I, I, I am excited.

I will say one of the things that I, I really love is there are a lot of churches embracing

like YouTube over just a Facebook stream more.

And I think that's the opportunity of getting away from time specific things that is really

encouraging.

Because if we're just talking about, you know, the first couple of weeks is just how do we

get weekend happening?

It's very streaming dependent, which is a great strategy, but you know, the internet, you know,

the whole thing is that you can do things 24 seven, you don't have to just, you know, get

people around a, you know, a specific time, which I think is corporately gathering on time,

real time is really important, um, especially for the church.

But I think if you build out a YouTube strategy where people can discover you and find you in

a lot of creative inbound type of real internet ways and not just replicating what's happening

and building online.

I think that's what I'm cool.

Also seeing churches, uh, especially now those are going back in person, thinking through

how do you have the tension between meeting in person and then having something online?

Maybe the online product is a little different.

And maybe, you know, the phrase that I've been using is like strategically streaming where

you're not streaming everything.

You're not just streaming what happens in a room, but maybe you do, maybe you have Sunday

and then you have a special edit and you put some love into it and you just make it a

little different.

Um, and then that, that goes back to inviting them back in person.

So those are some of my high level thoughts.

Strategically streaming.

I love that term.

I've been trying to figure out how to like describe that idea.

I'm, I'll give you credit for the first couple of times.

I'd say it's strategically streaming.

What, what, what said there.

Yeah, I agree with everything what Jay was saying.

I think kind of moving forward when it comes to resourcing, my biggest concern at this point

for, for at least for the Western church, uh, for, for us here in the United States

is that Jeff, you and I have talked about this privately.

Um, we're over resourced and we're under discipled, right?

Like we've got resources galore in terms of online content, in terms of communication, in

terms of a lot of stuff that exists out there.

Like, and I'm even surprised at all the different age groups now post COVID, right.

That are, are engaging with online channels to learn and, and, and to do different things.

My, my, I think moving forward, another big concern for me is content curation a long time

with some of this stuff as, and I'm not trying to make this completely political, but you know,

the QAnon stuff really did open up at least for us in the church, as far as a lot of misinformation

that can infiltrate the church and really steer it in a direction that we don't want to go.

And it, you know, a lot of pastors, I know Stetzer has even talked about this, how a lot

of pastors are afraid to address that with their own churches, because so many of them have

been discipled wrongly and poorly and driven towards a bad direction that they're afraid

to lose their congregation over it.

Uh, and that's something that just kind of weeded its way through, you know, thanks to

the algorithm and kind of found its way into the church and really took a lot of well-meaning

believers down a path that they never intended to go.

Um, you know, or as I love to joke around with folks, the things that my parents warned

me about as I was growing up, Hey, those video games are going to rot your brain.

Now I've got to warn them about, Hey, that internet's going to rot your brain.

So, you know, I've got to be constantly, you know, concerned about that in terms of, you

know, how that is shaping and shifting our disciples and our followers and where it's shifting

their attention, because if we're going to keep them on mission, then that also means

that we have to keep them, you know, thinking and moving in the right direction.

And we got to go from, you know, right.

The head to the heart, to the hands, to actual, actual action with that.

And so they're over-resourced, but the resources that they're receiving, the content creation

within that is a bit of a concern.

And then how it's actually leading them to action is another concern, because we've talked

about this with Jay before.

You know, they could just, and we saw it even with COVID, some of them found a different

digital church during that time, because there wasn't that kind of community.

They found a pastor that they liked hearing from more or somebody that was more their flavor.

And so they disconnected from community as a result.

And I think that's something that we just have to be more tapped into in terms of keeping

real relationship with our people, because if, what was it I heard today?

That the technology has to be, it has to make us more human.

We have to find greater ways to connect.

And so that right there, I think that's, that's a big concern for me moving forward.

Really, Ray, what you're talking about is like the, really, it's the heart of online to offline.

I want to, you know, I'm not promoting Jay and the stuff that he's been doing through Saddleback,

but it's this idea of if, if we're not seeing action in our hands, then we're creating content

that's only consuming.

We're creating consumers instead of driving that into offline realms where we're being real

with, with real people.

And that's why I love this idea of online to offline, the gospel that we hear in our online

world, it has to influence what we're doing offline.

And, and while that was a, a theoretical principle that philosophically we could talk about pre-COVID

now that we're coming into, you know, mid post-COVID, that's a reality.

I think more people are seeing that today and are understanding that standard today than definitely

was around before this thing got started back in, in March, 2020.

Let's pivot here.

Um, and let's dig into something, you know, I, I made a kind of a joke earlier about pastors

wanting to go back to February, 2020, uh, seriously though, in, in, in all respect, um, they do a

phenomenon.

There's so much pressure centered around a lead pastor in this environment in 2021.

Like I cannot imagine what it would be like to lead an organization of any size between shutting

the doors, the religious freedoms, the COVID safe.

And, and like, they don't prep any of them, not even talking about like the, the race issues

and everything that's, that's surrounding that there's no seminary class for this.

I'm guessing Jay Ray, you guys were seminary graduates.

They, they didn't, they didn't teach you about how to handle pandemics and no.

Okay, good.

Jay, I was the only one from a major city in my seminary.

I had, I had some, I had normal folk in my, in my, in my classes, but no, yeah, you're right.

Like it's not, you know, I loved my time at seminary.

It was, it was amazing, but you know, I, I actually asked my profs multiple times about

online ministry and they looked at me at complete confusion, um, because again, it's, you know,

they weren't using it.

And I think this is why it's really important that before you make judgments on platforms

in places, you need to, you need to, you need to just dabble in it.

I'm not saying you got to like full-time commit to it.

You know, there's a lot of platforms that I don't use daily.

Um, I barely use Instagram and Facebook daily.

Um, I, I I'm on them and I check and I interact, but I don't really, you know, you go to my

Instagram account.

I barely, I'm not on that that much, but I think it's about just having a presence and

understanding it.

And then by understanding it, or at least being in it, it allows you to start form bright

opinions on how to leverage it.

And so I, again, I think you're right.

Like the internet is, it's just a tool.

Um, technology is just a tool.

It's an, it's, you know, it's like fire.

It can burn your hand or it can, you know, cook your dinner.

And I think, uh, I think that's something that we, as I think the, and this is what I've

loved about pastors over the last, um, you know, 10 plus months, you know, just jumping

into the trenches is that they've started this, they've opened their eyes on what's potential.

There was such a closed off mind, I think for a long time.

And now they're like, you know what, this is possible, you know?

And just like anything, it's going to take work and strategy, but I do think the more

you have, you know, different minds thinking and processing and trying things, I think

we're going to have really cool things happen.

And, um, that's why I've always been a big believer that I think it's going to be the

churches, you know, under 500 that are really going to leverage the internet in a whole new

creative way.

Because here's the deal.

If you're a big church, you got a big building and you got big things to pay off and do things,

you know, there's a lot there and you have some sandbox to think, you know, to think through,

you know, that there's a reason why it's, it's hard to make that shift, but a small church,

you can start from the ground up.

You know, I, I, I, another phrase that I started to use is like, you know, the potential of like

location, less churches, you know, like really location, less churches.

And I know this is stuff, Jeff, you're, you're doing with Stadia and, but like, that's a shift.

And I've had, I've had many conversations with, with people over the last 10 years about this

concept and I've had people try it and fail, but I think the amount of people coming into

a seminary really thinking about that, I think is really cool.

They, I still think I get really worried about some of the barriers of entry with like huge

technologies, like the CRMs and stuff and how segmented they are.

And even I, I get overwhelmed at all that stuff.

And I, and I think, I, I still think there needs to be more innovation in that realm to

kind of make, you know, personalization really done right.

And automation and all this stuff like scale, because I think there's a lot of tools, but

you got to kind of Frankenstein it all together.

And I think, uh, I hope that more of these large, especially church CRMs that churches

are tied to, you know, have a come to Jesus moment and really think through like how to

build stuff.

Um, I don't know how much is possible.

I know there's cool stuff happening.

I'm, I don't live in that world, but I just feel like every other week I hear about some

new random CRM that I've never heard of that they're like, you know, knees deep in.

And I'm like, what in the world is this thing?

Why are the screenshots look like it's like a, you know, a windows 98 or something like,

you know, the software, but that's, that's true.

So I think data is such a huge thing.

And I, I always bring this up, but I just, it, you know, you get him, you just, you get

stuck if you can't really manipulate it and do things and personalize, you know, and, and

all that stuff.

I honestly did not think we would talk about CRMs and CHMSs today.

That was not on my radar.

So, so, so that that's intriguing.

Are you, are you advocating for, and I'm, I don't mean to put you on the spot.

I'm not looking for Mike drops explosion type, type things.

Like, is it, is it less it that you think is, is necessary?

Is it like a deeper feature base to get it more, more developed?

Like what, what, what are you kind of wrestling with here?

I just think all churches need to have a real assessment.

You need to have, you need to talk to every team in person, how they feel about your current

CRM.

Does it do what it needs to do?

Like, just do a, just do an audit, an internal audit, and then make the change if it's not

or hire the person to build the thing that needs to happen.

Because I think there's a lot of people have built things for like check-in tools and stuff

on Sunday, but I think like, like logged in experiences on your website or in your app

for your CRM, not to be all integrated together.

It's such a big, like, it's such a big disconnect.

And there are things that do this all a carton.

We all use services that they have a lot.

This isn't a drastic technology.

Like you can, you can go pay for like member full or something and you can do this.

You can, this is a, this is, this is an easy thing to pull off, but here's the deal is that

the CRM companies, you know, have to own the app company and have to own like the website

company.

And then sometimes all those things don't really like they don't, they don't work well.

So I just think it's a little bit of a mess.

There are things people are doing in this space, but you know, and, and, and there's, there's

cons to it.

So I just think personalization obviously is the no brainer word that has been for years,

but I think for churches to do that, right.

The techs, the technology deck has to all make sense.

And I think some of the tools that exist for churches, at least the church tools aren't

the greatest.

They're very siloed.

That's a, I'm probably just, I'm going to get an email from some CEO or something from

this, but I just, I just think that it doesn't really serve the church of a hundred very well,

you know, because you have to have an app company over here.

You have to do this over here and they don't talk to each other.

And it's like, why do I want an app?

If it's not part, the whole reason for an app is to be super personal.

And it's, and so, but yeah.

For us and the good news for us, Jay, at least the Christ fellowship, our CRM is a company

called one church and our app and everything is through that.

And so it's created more of that experience for it so much so that when we talked about

like creating that touchless experience, one of the things that we're able to unveil, you

know, when we were reopening was kids check in via the app that they could scan, you know,

they could check off their kids because it's logged into their account and they're giving

is through the same thing and everything.

And so for us, it's all underneath one temple.

Now, was that easy to pull off?

No.

And I still have to go up to every ministry and remind them, nope, you're not going to do

a Google form.

It's going to go through our CRM.

We're not going to create separate databases so much so that I'm even trying to like get

us away in our, in our comms department.

I'm trying to get us away from MailChimp because I'm trying to say, guys, that's a separate

database.

Like you're, you're over here collecting separate data that we can't come back and reevaluate

and know who our people are and know how they're engaging with us.

And so the toughest thing there is that we're not, you know, if we ever make that move,

we're not going to get the same robust tools that MailChimp provides.

Like, Hey, open rates or some of that other stuff.

I know that our guys are like people at one church are working on some of that stuff in

the background, but it's not there yet.

And having the patience to get there is tough for an organization, especially if you at one

point enjoyed some of those features.

Yeah.

That's it.

It's funny that we had this, my team, same thing.

We, we, we pay MailChimp a couple hundred dollars every month.

I think it's like over 300 bucks every month.

And it's a segmented experience and I had the exact same conversation.

We need to move to this other system and it's just pain.

And I had a conversation cause we, we use a, our church uses a big provider.

I'm forgetting their name right now, but they have to, I go, they have to be able to do

like automation stuff where I can add people to a list and trigger emails and stuff.

And, but we had to like, it's just not enabled for us.

So we have to like go through this, this process, but I'm like, and especially with like, you

know, data and stuff, we're moving towards all the data needs to be stored one place.

So if a member wants to be not contacted, we can't have all these multiple databases,

which is something that is happening very quickly already happened in Europe, but here

it's happening.

And I, yeah, so we're, same thing.

We're moving away from MailChimp, even though it does hurt me.

Cause I really do like MailChimp.

Yeah.

I mean, it's got a lot of robust tools, but like you're saying it, when we have segmented

data, that means that, you know, we can offend people real easily if they're trying

to get out of our mail list or we can lose people within the gap, which is what happened

more often than not was, oh man, there are people who fell through the cracks because

their stuff was in one spot, not necessarily in the overall.

Yeah.

We could have this conversation all day long.

We, maybe we need to dig into CRMs and CHMS church management solutions, software solutions

at a later time.

Honestly, that was like a, whoa, did that just happen?

I love that.

But, but it's true as we're looking to the future and even vendors that are, that are in

that space, just like we're challenging churches.

Hey, you've got to spend more budget here.

Vendors realize there are a lot of churches that have a much higher expectation now today

than they did technically digitally than they did in February, uh, 2019, um, uh, or 2020,

excuse me.

And so the more that we can pivot and go in that direction, um, as, as a vendor providing

solutions like that churches be ready to experiment through stadia.

We're actually running a number of experiments right now, utilizing software solutions that

didn't exist pre COVID, uh, and, and starting to kick the tires on things like this.

And altered live is one of those.

And we'll be talking more about that later, but love, uh, what we're seeing now with some

vendors and others follow soon, continue to help provide solutions for, for churches that

are, that are looking at doing ministry in this next normal of what's ahead.

So Jay, man, I have loved this time once again, and always love hanging out with you, even

though you are a Lakers fan, but Hey, go, go LeBron, I guess, to some level.

Uh, Hey, uh, Jay, as we're wrapping up, landing the plane here, any, any closing thoughts?

Yeah, I really, the one thing that I would say that a bare minimum as, as a church, no matter

your size, you really need to have somebody at the table, you know, that is thinking about

your digital presence, um, and thinking just at least being an advocate for that community.

That's something that I would tell it doesn't have to be staff.

It could be a volunteer, but somebody that, as you're thinking through, you know, what does

this mean for us digitally?

So I, especially as we go back to meeting in person over the next, you know, a couple

months, it's going to be really easy to gravitate back to like prioritizing the people

of the room, which is okay, but you really need, um, to have somebody on the team.

That's kind of just like reminding you kind of being the, you know, they're the pebble

in your shoe.

It's just kind of like saying, Hey, don't forget about us.

We've got to think through what does this mean, um, for, for those of you in our online

and so forth.

Love that.

I would echo that you got to have somebody who's thinking digital first, even if your

church is not somebody where, where that's the priority piece to that.

Hey, Ray, as we're wrapping up here, any closing thoughts?

Yeah, I completely agree with Jay in that somebody has to be at the table being the

advocate for this, um, and lead pastor, it's a top down deal.

And so make sure that you are continually pushing and thinking through digital as you're

crafting your message, as you're thinking through next steps, think about those digital

next steps too.

Are you going to have a text code?

Are you going to move people to an online form?

How are you going to do that?

Because more and more, and especially as we reopen, right?

So Jeff talked about that one church.

If 80% of your folks are out there watching it digitally, think of them first, no offense to

the people in the room, but think of those 80, that 80% first, because it could be your

mom, could be your aunt, your uncle, but think of that person that's behind the camera and

how you are crafting everything and even guiding them and discipling them through every area of

your ministry.

Yeah.

I would echo that even as you're thinking about what those next steps are digitally, try to

figure out what discipleship means for you in digital space.

Is that small groups?

Is there something where it's more equipping, uh, training?

Alpha has been doing some phenomenal things in evangelism, others as, as well in this season,

have an intentional approach towards what those next steps are digitally, just the same level

that you would physically.

And it's, it's amazing.

Even though people are not in your building, you could be growing them spiritually to the

place where they can be mobilized and released where, where you can help equip them to do ministry

instead of sitting on a chair in a big building, consuming a product, release them out to do

ministry.

So phenomenal concepts for 2021, excited for what's ahead.

Hey, so we're going to land a plane right here for Jay, for Ray, for the NBA 2021 season.

We're looking ahead.

Go Lakers.

That's weird.

Miami Heat.

Maybe we're going to wrap up here.

This is Jeff with the church digital and stated church planning.

Thanks for joining us.

We'll see you next time here at the pod.

Y'all have a good day.